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Reuters

Ukraine war becomes a cudgel in Republican Party’s internal conflict

David Morgan – March 13, 2022

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The war in Ukraine has opened a new front in the U.S. Republican Party’s civil war, with party primary candidates vying to run in the November midterm elections attacking each other for past comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Senate and House of Representatives races in at least three states, Republican candidates have been put on the defensive over comments describing Putin as intelligent, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “thug” and Ukraine as not worth defending. They now face criticism at a time when U.S. public opinion strongly supports Ukraine and its president.

Pat McCrory, a leading Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina’s May 17 primary election, lashed out this week at his Trump-backed Republican rival, Representative Ted Budd, in his first TV ad.

“While Ukrainians bled and died … Congressman Budd excused their killer,” McCrory says in the ad, which is interspersed with video clips from a TV interview showing Budd describing Putin as “a very intelligent actor” with “strategic reasons” for the invasion.

The ad also accused Budd, who has described Putin as “evil,” of casting votes “friendly” to Russia.

Budd’s campaign dismissed the McCrory ad in a statement, saying, “Ted Budd presented the sort of level-headed assessment of a foreign crisis you would expect from a U.S. Senator because he knows these are serious times that require strength and substance, not the empty soundbites.”

Before Russian forces moved on Ukraine on Feb. 24, some Republicans felt comfortable echoing former President Donald Trump’s praise for Putin as a strong leader, while denouncing U.S. policy toward Moscow.

Even after the invasion, two Trump allies in the House – Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar – participated in a white nationalist conference at which participants applauded Russia’s move on Ukraine and chanted Putin’s name.

Infighting over Putin and Ukraine has exacerbated existing divisions within the party over Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, and a House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters.

Trump has been widely criticized for describing Putin’s actions toward Ukraine as “genius” and “pretty savvy” in a Feb. 22 interview.

Also in North Carolina, Representative Madison Cawthorn came under fire from his Republican rivals over remarks at a town hall in which he criticized Zelenskiy and Ukraine.

“Remember that Zelenskiy is a thug. Remember the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies,” Cawthorn said in a video clip aired by WRAL-TV in Raleigh.

“ITS INCOMPREHENSIBLE THAT A MEMBER OF CONGRESS WOULD CALL UKRAINES PRESIDENT A THUG!” tweeted Michele Woodhouse, who is challenging Cawthorn in the Republican primary.

Cawthorn’s office did not respond to a Reuters query seeking comment.

The Republicans are vying to become candidates at the November midterm elections in which control of the U.S. Congress is at stake.

In Utah, independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer, attacked Republican Senator Mike Lee in an ad accusing the two-term incumbent of “making us weak and unsafe” in the midst of the current Ukraine crisis by opposing sanctions against Russia and visiting Moscow.

But the actions cited in the ad occurred years before the Ukraine invasion or were mischaracterized, according to the fact-checking website PolitiFact, which judged the ad “mostly false.”

Lee’s office did not respond to a Reuters query seeking comment. But McMullin’s campaign said it stood behind the ad and insisted that Lee has displayed a pattern of appeasing Putin.

(Reporting by David Morgan, Joseph Ax and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

Daily Beast

Why Putin Is Hell-Bent on Capturing Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors

Jeremy Kryt – March 13, 2022

The world watched in horror as shelling by Russian forces set fire to part of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Immediate catastrophe was averted when the flames were put out, but the plant—which is home to six separate reactors—was captured by the Kremlin’s forces on March 4.

Russia has also taken control of the nuclear facility at Chernobyl, which although inactive, still houses deadly radioactive materials. The situation at Chernobyl took a dramatic turn for the worse on March 9 when the power supply was cut off and the electricity-dependent cooling system for spent nuclear rods was endangered. A partial outage at Zaporizhzhya followed a day later.

Ukraine is home to three additional nuclear facilities totaling nine more reactors, and some observers have theorized those are also likely to be targeted as Russia seeks to gain control over the nation’s power supply.

“The Russians will want to secure the other three Ukrainian nuclear facilities as part of this strategy,” Dr. Robert J. Bunker, research director at the security consultancy ℅ Futures LLC, told The Daily Beast. Bunker hypothesized that an “airborne assault could be utilized as an early component of a ground force offensive drive” to seize one or more of the remaining plants. If or when Russian forces are able to regain the offensive, “the three reactors at the South Ukraine facility would be the next logical target in this regard.”

So what’s behind the Russians’ obsession with Ukraine’s nuclear plants?

Let’s start with Russia’s own stated reason for going after the plants, which is that Kyiv had been using material at the sites to build a thermononuclear bomb.Those charges escalated on March 9, when Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharaova told Russian media that Ukraine intended to use its alleged nuclear arsenal against Russia.

The Foreign Ministry Twitter account recorded Zakharova as saying that Russia had occupied Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya “exclusively to prevent any attempts to stage nuclear provocations, which is a risk that obviously exists.”

U.S. experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pushed back hard on those claims.

“That was a baseless invention by Moscow to justify its invasion and seizures of nuclear power plants,” said retired military intelligence officer Hal Kempfer.

Kempfer, who formerly directed a coalition task force that studied weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “creating information or ‘facts’ to fit an official narrative, no matter how fake, illogical, ridiculous, unsubstantiated or easily refuted they may be,” said Kempfer, who called the claim that Ukraine had intended to use WMDs “truly Orwellian.”

Bunker, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, agreed.

“I think the Russian narrative is meant to obscure Putin’s strategic objectives as well as use propaganda to make the Ukrainian defenders appear as aggressors and war criminals that must be stopped,” he said. “Also, if a radiological release or nuclear event took place the Russians might try to label it as part of a false flag Ukrainian or even NATO backed plot.”

There might not be a WMD plot afoot, but that doesn’t mean the reactors aren’t valuable targets, in particular because about 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power.

“There is strategic operation value in controlling energy and communication centers and choke points,” said retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson, whose writings originated the popular concept of Fourth Generation Warfare. “That aspect has considerable merit [for the Russians].”

According to Kempfer, part of that merit comes from the fact that such control over the electrical grid would allow the Kremlin to turn the lights off at will over vast swaths of Ukraine.

“Turning off the power nationwide—as [Russian force] have done on a smaller scale in Mariupol—in the middle of winter creates mass hardship and suffering for the Ukrainian population, and that is apparently a weapon Putin feels free to utilize,” Kempfer said.

Such a move could also have a chilling effect on the nation’s commerce.

Hey Putin, Your Masochism Is Showing

“The industry and economy of Ukraine can’t function if 50 percent of its power generation capabilities are either controlled by Russian forces or disabled,” said Futures’ research director Bunker, who also pointed out that the reactors could serve as immense “bargaining chips” in any future ceasefire or peace negotiations.

The reactors are also positioned near major railheads that transport nuclear fuel. Those same shipping hubs could be easily repurposed by the Russians for moving armored vehicles and munitions to battlefields around Ukraine, especially since their tanks have been running short on gas.

The targeting of nuclear facilities—including the wanton shelling that set part of Zaporizhzhya ablaze and the ongoing power outages at the plants—also sends a deliberate message that this is a kind of no-holds-barred warfare in which even the risk of nuclear devastation can’t be ruled out.

“It’s a psychological weapon being used to terrorize the population,” said intelligence officer Kempfer. “They’re [targeting nuclear plants] as a way to put tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian government to capitulate. That’s their endgame.”

Kempfer also said the takeovers were a way to warn the U.S. and NATO and against their potential involvement in the conflict.

“[The Kremlin] is able to raise the specter of radioactive calamity without ever introducing nuclear weapons. Putin is a calculating guy and he realizes that we get very concerned any time a nuclear plant is threatened. The world saw Chernobyl, the world saw Fukushima, and we don’t want to see that again.”

Kempfer likened the tactic of going after Ukraine’s nuclear plants to that of Rome sewing salt into Cartheginian soil at the end of the Punic Wars, so that nothing would ever grow there. “They’re saying […] we might irradiate a big chunk of Ukraine so it’s dead earth and you can never use it again. That’s the implied threat. That they can turn all of Ukraine into one big Chernobyl.”

Ukraine Accuses Putin of Plotting False-Flag ‘Terrorist Attack’ at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant

Taking risks that could lead to a catastrophic accident might be intended to show Russia’s disregard for the consequences of radioactive fallout, but Bunker said there could also be an even darker, more deliberate motive for going after reactors.

“If the Putin regime wants to play ‘authoritarian hardball’ it can threaten to release radiological material into the atmosphere from the Zaporizhzhia facility under its control,” Bunker said. Such a move could be used to force Kyiv to accept Russian rule or “as a deterrence measure to inhibit Ukrainian forces from retaking the facility.”

Marine Colonel Wilson called such behavior “Russian brinkmanship” designed “to give the impression of upping the ante in a very high-stakes encounter” in which “everything is targetable and nothing is safe.”

“Fear,” Wilson said, “is a very powerful weapon in warfare.”

Los Angeles Times

Russia intensifies assault, warns U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine are ‘legitimate targets’

Nabih Bulos, Jenny Jarvie – March 12, 2022

Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across Ukraine on Saturday, capturing the eastern outskirts of a key southern port and waging an increasingly violent campaign with an eye to encircling the capital even as they sought to bring a political veneer to their occupation in cities they have captured.

Moscow also signaled it could soon expand the war to embroil Kyiv’s allies, warning the U.S. that it would consider convoys carrying weapons to Ukraine to be “legitimate targets.” A few hours later, the White House announced it would send an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine.

While wide-scale Russian bombing campaigns intensified in cities including Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, Russian forces planned to conduct a referendum that would turn the city of Kherson — the first major city captured by Russian forces earlier this month — into a vassal breakaway republic, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

“Given zero popular support, it will be fully staged,” he wrote on Twitter, warning that it was a repeat of Russia’s playbook in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists held a referendum that led to the creation of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine.

“Severe sanctions against Russia must follow if they proceed. Kherson is & will always be Ukraine.”

Sergey Khlan, a deputy in the Kherson Regional Council, said in a post on Facebook on Saturday that Russian authorities were contacting deputies and asking for their cooperation in holding the referendum to create a putative Kherson People’s Republic.

“The creation of Kherson People’s Republic will turn our region into a hopeless hole without life and future,” Khlan wrote.

“Do not give them a single vote! Do not give them any opportunity to legitimize [the Kherson People’s Republic]… Enter the history of Ukraine not as traitors whom nobody wants, but truly as citizens whose names will be remembered by the next generations.”

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday that shipments of Western weapons to Ukraine could be attacked by Russian forces, according to Russia’s Itar-Tass  news agency. Western nations’ “thoughtless transfer” of portable air defense and antitank missile systems to Kyiv, Ryabkov said, demonstrated “the escalatory component of Washington’s policy.”

The White House announced Saturday it had approved an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine, on top of $350 million President Biden approved last month.

“We have warned the U.S. that the U.S.-orchestrated inundation of Ukraine with weapons from some countries is not just a dangerous move, but also an action that makes these convoys legitimate targets,” Ryabkov said. The Russian diplomat did not say whether Russian forces would target such convoys in Poland or Romania, NATO countries that border Ukraine.

The tough talk came on a day that Russian forces sustained “heavy losses in manpower and equipment” in areas northeast of Kyiv and were prevented from regaining a foothold on previously captured frontiers, according to the Ukrainian military.

Northwest of the capital, the bulk of Russian ground forces were gathered Saturday about 15 miles from the city center, according to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense. Parts of the large Russian column north of Kyiv had dispersed, the ministry said, either in an effort to encircle the city or limit its risk of Ukrainian counterattacks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 12,700 people evacuated Saturday, taking advantage of humanitarian corridors. But not everyone was allowed safe passage.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense claimed Russian troops shot at a group of women and children who were trying to evacuate Friday from the small village of Peremoga, 18 miles northeast of Kyiv, along a previously-agreed “green” corridor.

“The result of this brutal act was seven dead,” the ministry wrote in a tweet. “One of them is a child.”

Early in the morning, loud explosions reverberated near the capital. Rumbles — louder and closer than the booms of previous days — could be heard throughout the day and well into the night in Kyiv. They served as the calling card of the Russian pincers stretching toward the capital from its northeastern and northwestern flanks.

Despite holding off enemy forces from the capital, Ukrainian officials admitted a bitter defeat, acknowledging that Russia had seized the eastern suburban fringes of Mariupol, a strategic city in the southeastern Donetsk region that could allow it to build a land corridor from pro-Moscow enclaves in the east to Russian-annexed Crimea in the south.

Russian shelling of the city hit a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, according to the Ukrainian government, and repeated efforts to evacuate 430,000 residents have failed as their convoys have come under artillery fire. Dozens of buses loaded with humanitarian supplies were reported to be attempting to reach the city.

“Let’s see whether this one gets here or not,” Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov said in an interview with the BBC, noting that six previous attempts to bring food, water and medicine to his beleaguered city were unsuccessful.

“The convoys were not let through,” he said. “They were bombed, the road was mined, there was shelling in the town.”

“I think we can say we’re in the disaster phase now,” Alex Wade, an emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders told CNN, noting that residents had gone a week without access to clean drinking water and were using snow and rain water and breaking into heating systems to extract the water inside.

“The next phase we will see people who potentially could die from dehydration and hunger or … fleeing from the city trying to find food and water and dying from the violence outside the city,” he said.

Some residents, he said, had taken their neighbors’ bodies and buried them in their yards to ensure they were not left to languish on the street.

In Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding center about 300 miles west of Mariupol, Mayor Olexandr Senkevitch claimed in a video posted Saturday on Instagram that eight civilians were injured and more than 160 houses, three hospitals and 11 educational institutions were damaged overnight.

“We will definitely repair and restore everything,” he said. “We heal the wounded. And defeat these damn orcs,” referring to the Ukrainian nickname for Russian forces.

With those forces assembled about 15 miles outside Kyiv, Zelensky struck a confident tone from inside the capital, where citizen militias are armed with missiles, machine guns and Molotov cocktails.

“We know 100% there will be a victory,” he said in a news conference.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Zelensky said, about 1,300 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had died — a fraction of the 12,000 Russians that he claimed had died. The numbers could not be independently verified.

“One in 10,” he said.

Asked if Russian troops could enter Kyiv, Zelensky said it was theoretically possible.

“If they carry out a carpet bombing and simply decide to erase the historical memory of the whole region, the history of Kyivan Rus’, the history of Europe, they will enter Kyiv,” he added. “If they destroy all of us, they will enter Kyiv. If this is the goal, they will enter and will have to live on this land alone, without us. They will not find friends among us here.”

Zelensky urged Ukrainians to keep fighting.

“The resistance of the entire Ukrainian people against these invaders has already gone down in history,” Zelensky said. “But we have no right to reduce the intensity of defense. No matter how difficult it is. We have no right to reduce the energy of resistance.”

In Melitopol, 120 miles west of Mariupol, hundreds gathered on the streets Saturday to demand the release of the southern city’s mayor, Ivan Fedorov, who the Ukrainian government has said was kidnapped from a government office Friday by Russian forces.

“Fedorov!” the crowd chanted. “Free the mayor!”

After accusing Russia on Saturday of “switching to a new stage of terror” in trying to “physically eliminate” elected officials, Zelensky praised the protesters for their open resistance.

“The invaders must see that they are strangers on our land, on all our land of Ukraine, and they will never be accepted,” he said in a video broadcast.

In telephone conversations with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, Zelensky said he urged them to push for Fedorov’s release.

“The demand is simple: to release him from captivity immediately,” he said. “We expect them, the world leaders, to show how they can influence the situation. How they can do a simple thing: free one person. A person who represents the entire Melitopol community, Ukrainians who do not give up.”

Russia’s intensified assault on the cities and villages of Ukraine came as the United States continued to insist that diplomacy still had a role in the conflict.

But prospects of a resolution looked dim after Scholz and Macron unsuccessfully tried in a lengthy telephone call Saturday to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate cease-fire or diplomatic talks.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency also reported Saturday that Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview that Moscow and Washington were not negotiating or consulting on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in the disputed Donbas region, the self-appointed head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, issued a decree Saturday saying the borders of the state would correspond to those declared in May 2014. (Ukrainian forces had clawed back two-thirds of the Donbas before a cease-fire later in 2014.)

The move aims to formalize gains in recent days after Russian forces — backed by separatists — advanced into government-held areas of Luhansk province. A day earlier, Pasechnik issued another decree restoring names of streets that had been changed after the Ukrainian government’s so-called de-communization drive.

Bulos reported from Kyiv and Jarvie from Atlanta.

The New York Times

How a Line of Russian Tanks Became an Inviting Target for Ukrainians

Andrew E. Kramer – March 12, 2022

BROVARY, Ukraine — The column of Russian tanks rumbled along a main highway to the east of Kyiv, between two rows of houses in a small town — a vulnerable target.

Soon, Ukrainian forces were sending artillery shells raining down on the Russian convoy, while soldiers ambushed them with anti-tank missiles, leaving a line of charred, burning tanks.

Brovary is just 8 miles from downtown Kyiv, and the skirmish on the M01 Highway on Wednesday illustrated how close Russian forces have come as they continue to tighten a noose on the nation’s capital — the biggest prize of all in the war. The Russians on Friday continued to try to close in on Kyiv, with combat to the northwest and east that consisted mostly of fierce, seesaw battles for control of small towns and roads.

But the attack by Ukrainian troops in Brovary also cast into sharp relief the strategic challenges — and, military analysts say, the strategic missteps — that have bedeviled Russian forces and prevented them, so far, from gaining control of most major cities.

Although Russian forces greatly outnumber the Ukrainian army and have far superior weaponry, their size and their need to mostly use open roads make them less mobile and susceptible to attack from Ukrainian troops that can launch artillery strikes from several miles away, in tandem with surgical ambushes.

“Urban combat is always difficult, and I don’t think the Russians are any better at it than others,” said Tor Bukkvol, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, a military think tank, and an authority on Russia’s special forces.

He said the Russian military was engaged in a plodding, armored advance into the urban landscape of the city’s outlying towns.

“I’m not sure there is much of a strategy at the moment,” he said.

Illia Berezenko, a Ukrainian soldier who witnessed the Ukrainian attack on the Russian armored column Wednesday from a distant position but did not take part in it, said it aimed to hit the first and last tank in the column, in hopes of trapping those in the middle.

From that perspective, the strike, which set off fighting through a swath of villages in this area that is still ongoing, was only a partial success. In drone video of the ambush released by the Ukrainian army, which largely corresponds to Berezenko’s account, many Russian armored vehicles can be seen driving away, apparently unharmed, while others burn.

Still, Berezenko said that from his viewpoint as a soldier, the episode was indicative of Russian mistakes. The cluster of armored vehicles on the road was an easy target, he said. “Their artillery came first, then their tanks. The whole scenario was weird,” he said.

He said the column was moving with self-propelled artillery vehicles, which typically operate to the rear of frontline forces, mixed with tanks. Indeed, in the video released by the Ukrainian military, what appears to be a Russian Tos-1, a rocket artillery launcher nicknamed the Pinocchio for its bulging noselike box of rockets, is seen driving amid the mayhem of exploding tanks.

“I don’t know why they are doing it,” Berezenko said. “Maybe they want to confuse us. Maybe they have some other understanding of what they are doing. Who knows?”

He said days of artillery shelling had dulled his nerves. “I was feeling normal” and not nervous during the skirmish, he said. “There is nothing exciting about seeing a tank,’’ he said. “Everybody wants to live.”

Military analysts share Ukrainian soldiers’ puzzlement over the halting Russian advances toward Kyiv so far. It might be a pause, while a new strategy is devised, said Dima Adamsky, an expert on Russian security policy at Reichman University in Israel.

On the first day of the war, the Russian military attempted a lightning raid on the capital using special forces in an elite airborne unit. These troops tried to seize an airfield north of Kyiv, in the town of Hostomel, in a helicopter assault with apparent goal of creating a staging area for a quick attack.

But Ukrainian troops shot down a number of helicopters, sending the operation into disarray, then drove those Russians who had managed to land off the airfield and into a forest, according to Ukrainian soldiers who took part in that battle.

Russian armored columns moving toward the capital from Belarus became bogged down in unexpectedly fierce resistance. Military analysts say these circumstances left the Russian army with no good choices as it advanced toward Kyiv.

“They were convinced in the success of Plan A, that they would take Kyiv without a lot of bloodshed, but now are reverting to an older form of warfare,” said Bukkvol, of the Norwegian research center.

For the Ukrainians, he said, the strategy will be to “draw the enemy into the city,” where armored vehicles are channeled into streets, rather than spread out in fields.

This tactic was evident in the strike on the column outside of Brovary, where armored vehicles were hit as they exited the open fields and entered a stretch of highway bordered by houses, blocking any escapes.

The Ukrainians, said Berezenko, fired with “pretty much everything they had” including anti-tank missiles from close range and artillery from farther away. He was ordered to a fallback position and didn’t see the aftermath.

Videos posted on Ukrainian social networks showed an armored personnel carrier, peeled open by an explosion and spewing yellow flames. A Reuters videographer shot footage of Ukrainian soldiers starting up and driving away an abandoned Russian tank. It was unclear how many armored vehicles were in the column and how many were destroyed.

The drone video of the attack also cheered Ukrainian soldiers inside the city. “It was beautiful,” said one soldier manning a checkpoint, who declined to be identified. “We just poured it onto them.” The video showed plumes of black smoke and dust bursting on the pavement and a tank apparently trying, awkwardly, to pivot on the shoulder of the road to head back the other way.

Driving out of Kyiv to the east, the high-rises of the city center give way to malls, gas stations and furniture stores, then a forest and a few miles away the suburban community of Brovary.

Although the strike forced the Russian column to retreat, days of fighting ensued in the villages east of here. And it was not without Ukrainian casualties.

In the hours and days after the strike, 20 wounded soldiers and civilians arrived at the hospital in Brovary. Volodymyr Andriets, deputy director of the emergency room, said all had suffered concussions or wounds from shrapnel or bullets.

They included members of a family whose car was shot at Thursday by Russian forces who had dispersed into a wooded area east of the town after Wednesday’s ambush. The father, Sergei Lugina, said a bullet hit his 14-year-old daughter, Yekaterina, in the right shoulder and another blew off three fingers on his right hand. He said he managed to keep driving until he reached a Ukrainian checkpoint.

One soldier had a gaping shrapnel wound in his right wrist but was resisting recommendations to amputate, Andriets said.

“He understands he will lose his hand” but was still resisting, Andriets said.

Shock was wearing off and the soldier was becoming depressed, he said. Of the successful ambush on the M01 Highway east of Brovary, Andriets said, “he’s not thinking of this now. Maybe later he will understand this was a victory for Ukraine.”

Mother Jones

Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson

David Corn, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief – March 13, 2022

The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.

• On March 3rd, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”

The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus. It was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified. The source said memos like this one have been regularly sent by Putin’s administration to media organizations during the war. Independent media outlets in Russia have been forced to shut down since the start of the conflict. 

The March 3 document opens with top-line themes the Kremlin wanted Russian media to spread: The Russian invasion is “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes on its territory”; Ukraine has a history of nationalism (that presumably threatens Russia); the Russian military operation is proceeding as planned; Putin is protecting all Russians; the “losing” Ukrainian army is shelling residential areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia; foreign mercenaries are arriving in Ukraine; Europe “is facing more and more problems” because of its own sanctions; and there will be “danger and possible legal consequences” for those in Russia who protest the war. The document notes that it is “necessary to continue quoting” Putin. It claims that the “hysteria of the West had reached the inexplicable level” of people calling for killing dogs and cats from Russia and asks, “Today they call for the killing of animals from Russia. Tomorrow, will they call for killing people from Russia?”

A section headlined “Victory in Information War” tells Russian journalists to push these specific points: The Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse; the Kyiv government is guilty of “war crimes”; and Moscow is the target of a “massive Western anti-Russian propaganda” operation. It states that Russian media should raise questions about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state of mind and suggest he is not truly in charge of Ukraine. And it encourages these outlets to “broadcast messages” highlighting the law recently passed by the Russia Duma that makes it a crime to impede the war effort or disseminate what the government deems “false” information about the war, punishable for up to 15 years in prison. This portion instructs Russian journalists to emphasize that these penalties apply to anyone who promotes news about Ukrainian military victories or Russian attacks on civilian targets.

This is the section of the memo that calls on Russian media to make as much use as possible of Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts. No other Western journalist is referenced in the memo.

Mother Jones is not posting the full document to protect the source of the material. Here are photos of the memo. The first shows the opening page; the next displays the paragraph citing Carlson.

Prior to the Russian invasion, Carlson was perhaps the most prominent American voice challenging opposition to Putin. In one now-infamous commentary, he said, “Why do Democrats want you to hate Putin? Has Putin shipped every middle class job in your town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked your business? Is he teaching your kids to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Does he eat dogs?”

Carlson repeatedly noted there was no reason for the United States to assist Ukraine in its battle with Russia and insisted it was “not treason, it is not un-American” to support Putin. He contended that Ukraine was not “a democracy” but a “client state” of the US government.

After Putin attacked Ukraine, Carlson ceased his anti-anti-Putin rhetoric and shifted to a new line: that the United States and the West purposefully goaded Putin into launching the war. Carlson said it was “obvious” that “getting Ukraine to join NATO was the key to inciting war with Russia.” He asked, “Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war?” He said he did not know. 

More recently, Carlson mouthed Russian disinformation, and he did so as a new set of Kremlin talking points once again pushed Russian journalists to cite the Fox host. 

On Wednesday, Carlson claimed that the “Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.” He was referring to the Russian allegation that the United States had set up biowarfare labs in Ukraine. But this charge was far from proven. At a congressional hearing, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland had testified that Ukraine possessed biological research facilities and that the US government was worried about “research materials” falling into the hands of Russian forces. This was a far cry from substantiating the Russian charge that Washington was working on bioweapons in Ukraine. But Putin’s regime jumped on the Nuland testimony and cited it as proof of nefarious American activity. Carlson echoed this Russian propaganda.

A March 10 “recommendations for coverage” memo from the same Russian agency highlights this bioweapons allegation as a top talking point for Russian media, noting the message should be that the “activities of military biological laboratories with American participation on the territory of Ukraine carried global threats to Russia and Europe.” The document goes further, encouraging its recipients to allege that the “the United States is working on a ‘biogenocide of the Eastern Slavs.’”

The memo lays out the details of this bizarre conspiracy theory: The United States was conducting “experiments with genetic material collected on the territory of Ukraine,” with the “main objective” being “to create unique strains of various kinds of viruses for targeted destruction of the population in Russia.” The United States even had a plan to transmit pathogens “by wild birds migrating between Ukraine, Russia and other neighboring countries.” This scheme included “studying the possibility of carrying African swine fever and anthrax.” The memo claims “biolaboratories set up and funded in Ukraine have been experimenting with bat coronavirus samples.” It cites Nuland’s testimony and says the United States was involved with “military biological laboratories” in Ukraine that “potentially posed a global threat to all of Europe.”

Carlson had amplified a slice of this Russian propaganda. 

The March 10 memo advises Russian journalists to cite Carlson on another matter: how the economic sanctions imposed on Russia would harm Americans:

American analyst and Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson called President Biden’s sanctions policy a punishment for the American middle class: “Biden explained that he was going to punish Putin by banning Americans from buying Russian energy resources. But the problem is that markets around the world are already ready for Russian oil, starting with China, India, and Turkey. If you want to get to the bottom of it, just think about who will suffer the most from sanctions? The answer is not on the surface. Middle-income Americans will suffer. The very people who were crushed by Covid restrictions for two years. Now they will suffer from cuts to energy sources… So, the Vladimir Putin who is being punished, is actually American citizens—yes, all of you.”

The document notes that Carlson’s anti-sanctions argument “can be reinforced with a selection of reports that enthusiastically encourage Americans to tighten their belts in the name of saving Ukraine.”

As with the March 3 memo, Carlson was the only Western journalist named in this more recent how-to-help-Putin memo. But this edition does point out that the New York Post “writes that it was not anti-Russian sanctions that spurred inflation, but rather the wild spending of Joe Biden himself. President Biden wants to blame Vladimir Putin for the rise in inflation. However, all the fault comes from his policy implemented long before the Ukrainian crisis.”

The March 10 guidelines contains other false claims for Russian journalists to promote: that US forces had been training Ukrainians to launch an offensive in Donbas this month and that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was an effort to preempt that military action; that the Ukrainians have plans to “use nuclear weapons in some form”; and that the horrific bombing of Mariupol that struck a hospital and a birthing center was fake news. It urges Russian journalists to assert that Russia was being victimized by cancel culture and Russophobia was “on the march.”

It’s unclear whether these memos had any impact on Russian media outlets, which already were regularly citing and praising Carlson. Pro-Putin media organizations in Russia may not have needed the Kremlin’s recent encouragement to make Carlson a star. RT, the Russian propaganda outlet, embraced Carlson’s defense of RT after social media companies banned RT content. And on Friday, Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a splashy story headlined “Well-known American TV journalist Carlson was outraged by the ‘lies of the United States.’” It was all about Tucker’s on-air (and unfounded) anger over the Nuland testimony and the biolab allegations. In this instance, a pro-Putin Russian media outlet was using Carlson’s disinformation to advance Moscow disinformation. Just like the Kremlin wanted.

Fox News and Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting was provided by David Lee Preston and Hannah Levintova.

The Washington Post

Putin’s pre-war moves against U.S. tech giants laid groundwork for crackdown on free expression

Greg Miller and Joseph Menn – March 12, 2022

Russian agents came to the home of Google’s top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison.

Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents – believed by company officials to be from Russia’s FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service – then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook.

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition – moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine.

In a single year, Putin had his political nemesis Alexei Navalny imprisoned after a poisoning attempt failed to kill him; pushed independent news outlets to the brink of extinction; orchestrated a Kremlin-controlled takeover of Russia’s Facebook equivalent; and issued “liquidation” orders against human rights organizations.

Amid this internal offensive, Putin also moved to bring foreign technology companies to heel. Moscow deployed new devices that let it degrade or even block Russians’ access to Facebook and Twitter, imposed fines totaling $120 million on firms accused of defying Kremlin censors, and ordered 13 of the world’s largest technology companies to keep employees in Russia and thus exposed to potential arrest or other punishment for their employers’ actions – a measure that U.S. executives refer to as the “hostage law.”

On their own, these moves were seen as disparate signs of Russia’ descent into authoritarianism. But they also laid the groundwork for the Soviet-style suppression of free expression now underway in Russia, much as the months-long military buildup set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s crackdown has accelerated in recent weeks. Facebook and Twitter have been knocked offline by the government for millions of Russians. News outlets that survived state harassment for years shut down this month in the face of a new law imposing prison time of up to 15 years for spreading “fake” news – understood to be anything contradicting the Kremlin’s depiction of a “special military operation” unfolding with precision in Ukraine.

To Russian activists, the impact has been devastating.

“Every meaningful, practical avenue for dissent is being systematically shut down,” said Pavel Khodorkovsky, founder of the New York-based Institute for Modern Russia, whose father was one of Russia’s original oligarchs before spending a decade in prison after confronting Putin over corruption.

“I don’t think it’s an over dramatization to say that Putin is longing for a return to Soviet Union times,” Khodorkovsky said, “not only in geopolitical power but in terms of total control inside the state.”

There is preliminary evidence that the suppression strategy is working. Polls, whose reliability is always uncertain in Russia, show that a majority of Russians support the war. In interviews with Western journalists that have gone viral online, Russians who rely on state-controlled media have consistently echoed Kremlin falsehoods about eradicating alleged Nazism in Ukraine while seeming to be genuinely oblivious to the war’s carnage.

For relatives on opposite sides of the Ukraine border, reality has cleaved. Civilians in the besieged cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa have described surreal conversations with family members in Russia who refuse to believe that Russian forces are bombing residential districts, that women and children are among the casualties, and that 2 million people have fled a country hit by power outages and food shortages.

The war is still in its early days. And it may prove more difficult for the Kremlin to sustain its information blockade as costs of the conflict, including mounting casualties and sanctions that are turning the country into an economically marooned pariah, penetrate Russian society.

Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms have played a major role in galvanizing the global response. Viral images of the devastation in Ukraine and video clips of the country’s resilient leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, have shaped world opinion and exposed Moscow’s war claims as fiction.

American technology companies have used their power to add to the pressure on Putin. Google’s YouTube platform has blocked RT, Sputnik and other Russian propaganda channels globally, and cut them off from ad revenue. Facebook, which Russia has sought to declare an “extremist” organization, has taken similar steps against state media outlets. Apple has “paused” sales of iPhones and other devices in Russia and removed RT and Sputnik from its app store outside the country.

But American tech companies have also made numerous compromises with the Kremlin in recent years that have undermined activist groups, impaired Russians’ access to reliable information and look increasingly problematic in the wake of the invasion.

Even after the threat to its executive, Google kept its employees in Russia and continued to negotiate with the Kremlin on ways to comply with the so-called landing law putting company officials there at risk of arrest or other punishment, according to industry executives familiar with the discussions. Those talks were still underway, one executive said, even after U.S. officials were warning that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent.

Apple has similarly kept employees in Russia and taken other steps to placate the Kremlin. The company last year began configuring iPhones sold in Russia to promote Kremlin-backed social media companies, enabling users to activate them with a single click. It is an accommodation Apple has rarely made elsewhere and advances Putin’s goal of migrating Russian people to platforms controlled by the government, according to Russia analysts.

Among them is VKontakte, a Facebook equivalent that in December became majority owned by the state-run energy giant Gazprom.

Apple is also yet to give Russian users access to a new security tool, Private Relay, that could help Russians reach foreign news coverage and other content blocked by the government. The feature, designed to render Internet browsing untraceable, comes pre-installed on new phones in the United States and other markets. But those who try to activate it in Russia get a message saying that the program “is not supported” in that country.

Apple’s decision has baffled Russian analysts.

“What is the reason at this point to accommodate the Russian government?” asked Sergey Sanovich, a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University tracking the Kremlin crackdown. “I’m not sure what [Apple] has in Russia that they are trying to protect at this point.”

Apple, through a spokesman, declined to answer questions from The Post or comment for this article. Google did not directly respond to questions, but referred The Post to a Web site where the company lists its responses to the Ukraine crisis.

For years, American technology companies navigated a narrow path in relations with the Kremlin. Google and others resisted some of the most invasive demands, including a law requiring the storing of users’ data on servers in Russia more likely to be breached by the government. But the firms granted concessions in other areas in part to preserve access to the Russian market.

“A lot of tech companies played rope-a-dope with the Russian government,” said Andrew Weiss, a former White House official who oversees research on Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The war in Ukraine has scrambled those calculations, and, at least in some corridors of Silicon Valley, led to bouts of second-guessing.

“There is concern about the employees we have there,” said an executive with one of the companies that has been a target of pressure by the Kremlin. “There may come a point where [my] company decides it’s not worth it anymore and just completely pulls up stakes.” He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the situation’s sensitivity.

Even critics of U.S. tech companies acknowledge that departures on those terms could be harmful to U.S. interests and advantageous to Putin.

The devices and platforms provided by American tech firms have functioned as conduits of Western information and ideas to millions of Russians. This American technology has been critical to protest movements and reform advocates, enabling such groups to raise money, build support and map strategy on encrypted channels that are more difficult for Russian intelligence agencies to monitor.

A decade ago, Navalny’s group started with about 50,000 followers, but was reaching as many as 10 million a day before the war through videos and other messages distributed on YouTube, Twitter, Telegram and other platforms, according to Leonid Volkov, the political director for the organization.

That is in part why the decisions by Google and Apple to take down the Navalny app in September were seen as such betrayal, Volkov said. “It was a major blow to our supporters,” he said. “They really helped Putin.”

The Smart Voting app, as it was called, had sought to help Navalny supporters across the country select candidates with the best prospects of beating representatives of Putin’s United Russia party. The aim was not to take control of the Duma – considered an impossibility because of ballot manipulation – but to eat into United Russia’s margin of victory, bring new energy to the opposition movement and deliver an embarrassing setback to Putin, Volkov said.

The app had been conceived in part as a way to evade Kremlin censors; while Russian authorities were well equipped to take down lists posted online, the main censorship body, Roskomnadzor, had not demonstrated that it could interfere with downloads through Google and Apple’s secure app stores to millions of cellphones.

Navalny’s organization had spent months fine-tuning the app and selecting 1,300 candidates for endorsements. Then, at 8 a.m. on Sept. 17, just as the three-day voting period for the Duma election was to get underway, the app disappeared from Google and Apple platforms.

The removal of the app came after a period of escalating pressure. Weeks earlier, Roskomnadzor had ordered Apple, Google and other companies to sever all ties to Navalny, citing his group’s status as an “extremist” entity and warning that any link to the voting app would be construed as foreign election interference.

On Sept. 3, a Moscow court had ordered Google and Yandex, the main Russian search engine, to stop displaying Navalny-related results on their websites. A week later, U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan was summoned to the Kremlin. “There is one reason – interference in Russian elections,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a posting on the messaging service Telegram.

When Google and Apple resisted removing the app, the Kremlin’s tactics became more menacing. On Sept. 14, armed Russian police entered Google’s offices in Moscow, a frightening show of force staged under the pretext of collecting fines for alleged content and other violations.

The first sign of trouble for Navalny’s team came the next day when the organization made its first attempt to post a list of endorsed candidates to the Smart Voting app and “nothing happened,” Volkov said. At first, he said, it was unclear whether there was a technical problem or the companies were succumbing to pressure.

Even so, the app had remained available to download until the morning after Russian agents arrived at the Google and Apple representatives’ doorsteps. Google’s executive, a Russian citizen, was “essentially threatened with treason as a Russian citizen,” said an executive with knowledge of the episode.

Executives asked that her identity not be disclosed out of concern for her safety.

The group tried to get its endorsements out through other means, posting lists to the Google Docs platform and even reading the names of endorsed candidates on videos posted to YouTube. But that material was taken down as well under pressure from Roskomnadzor.

Volkov filed complaints with both companies, pleading with them to reinstate the group’s software. Google finally did so, but only days after the election – when distributing the list of endorsed candidates had become pointless.

Russia also tried to force Twitter to censor Navalny and others. But it did not have employees in the country to be threatened. Instead, the Russian government made a crude attempt to block Internet access to Twitter, inadvertently blocking other sites as well.

The removal of the app by Google and Apple was met with relative silence from Western governments, a muted reaction that stunned not only Navalny’s group but some company executives.

“When we took down the Navalny app, there was not a peep from any democratic element,” said an industry executive who had disagreed with the decision. “I was hoping we’d be beaten by [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken” or other U.S. or European Union officials, the executive said. “But no one did.”

Google executives disclosed the removal of the app in an internal email whose contrite tone suggests that the decision was not popular with some employees. “We resisted this position for as long as possible,” the message said, “but nothing is more important to Google than the safety and well-being of our employees.”

Apple responded to Navalny with a legalistic defense of its decision. The orders to take down the app “reflect the state of the law in Russia and Apple was obliged to act on the orders,” the letter said, according to a copy shared by Volkov.

It is hard to know what impact the companies’ capitulation had on the election. United Russia ended up losing about 20 seats in the Sept. 19 election, far short of the 60 or 70 that Volkov said his organization thought it was in position to gain before the decisions by Google and Apple.

– – –

The core of Navalny’s team fled Russia last year and now works from an office in Vilnius, Lithuania, several blocks from a museum where Soviet-era prison cells and torture chambers have been preserved in a building that served as a KGB headquarters.

In an interview before the Ukraine invasion, Volkov talked about the dire situation for dissidents and how it might take an unexpected shock to society – what he referred to as a “Black Swan” event – to dispel Russia’s political apathy and threaten Putin.

The invasion has seemingly delivered such a scenario, creating extraordinary upheaval. But Navalny’s organization is not in Russia to mobilize opposition, and its ability to do so through online means has been impaired by Putin’s campaign of suppression.

In recent weeks, however, Navalny has found new use for the app, posting appeals to Russians urging them to attend antiwar rallies, and sharing news about his trial on charges of embezzlement from his own organization – allegations that he adamantly denies and that U.S. officials consider politically driven.

Those messages now flow to users of cellphones powered by Google’s Android operating system, which accounts for about two-thirds of the Russian market.

But iPhone users in Russia can’t see them.

Volkov sent another letter to Apple on March 1, urging the company again to reconsider. “With independent media being banned in Russia, our team’s resources serve as the key source of objective information about the war,” the letter said, adding that because other platforms were blocked, “the most important media among our resources was the application.”

Apple responded that it was reviewing the matter, Volkov said, but as of Friday had yet to reinstate the Navalny application.

The Washington Post’s Gerrit De Vynck and Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.

USA Today

Zelensky says Ukraine still in daily talks with Russia; US journalist killed in Ukraine: Live updates

John Bacon, Katie Wadington, Celina Tebor, Terry Collins –

March 13, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will continue negotiating with Russia and is waiting for a meeting with its leader, Vladimir Putin despite repeated escalated attacks by Russia in Ukraine.

So far, Zelensky’s requests have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. During his nightly address to his nation, Zelensky said Sunday that his delegation has a “clear task” to do everything to ensure a meeting between the two presidents, the Associated Press reports.

Zelensky said there are daily discussions between the two countries via video conference. He said the talks are necessary to establish a cease-fire and more humanitarian corridors. He said those corridors have saved more than 130,000 people in six days.

The humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Mariupol was blocked Sunday by Russian forces. Zelensky said they would try again Monday.

Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s negotiator and President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, confirmed the daily talks, the BBC reports. In a video posted on social media, Podolyak said Russia was beginning to engage constructively.

“Russia now much more adequately perceives the world around it,” Podolyak said. “It is much more sensitive to the position of Ukraine, which has been proven in battlefields, and in Ukraine’s actions in terms of protecting its interests.”

►’MASS CASUALTY SITUATION’: Downtown Kyiv hospital braces for carnage doctors fear will come

►’WORSE THAN HELL’: Mariupol mother fears for her daughter as Russia lays siege to the Ukrainian city

Latest developments:

►White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday. China has called for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine but has rejected sanctions against Russia.

►Russia has opened 14 recruitment centers in Syria and will pay mercenaries up to $600 per month to fight in Ukraine, the Ukraine military said.

►Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to create “pseudo-republics” to break his country apart. He urged Ukraine’s regions not to follow the path of two eastern areas – Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic – where pro-Russian separatists clashed with Ukrainian forces in 2014.

►An estimated 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia began its invasion, according to Zelenskyy, who claims 12,000 Russian forces have been killed.

►Kyiv is preparing for a possible blockade by stockpiling humanitarian supplies to support the city’s residents, city officials said Sunday.

►Almost 2.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Tens of thousands Europeans protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Europe saw tens of thousands of people rallying Sunday in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Milan, Italy’s financial capital, protesters held bloodied cloth bundles to represent Ukrainian children killed in Russian attacks. Germans carried flags in the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine during protest in Berlin spurred by trade workers.

Anti-war protests were also staged in Warsaw, London and the German cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart. Small vigils took place in Russia as well, despite a crackdown by authorities against demonstrations.

Russian protests against the war in Ukraine have been typically met with a heavy police response. Rights group OVD-Info said more than 668 people had been detained in 36 cities as of late afternoon Sunday Moscow time.

The number of Russians protesting nationwide appeared to have shrunk significantly from major protests a week ago when OVD-Info said over 5,000 people were detained.

Zelensky says Urkaine still in daily talks with Russia; wants Putin at the table

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will continue negotiating with Russia and is waiting for a meeting with its leader, Vladimir Putin despite repeated calls.

So far, Zelensky’s requests have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. During his nightly address to his nation, Zelensky said Sunday that his delegation has a “clear task” to do everything to ensure a meeting between the two presidents, the Associated Press reports.

Zelensky said there are daily discussions between the two countries via video conference. He said the talks are necessary to establish a cease-fire and more humanitarian corridors. He said those corridors have saved more than 130,000 people in six days.

The humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Mariupol was blocked Sunday by Russian forces. Zelensky said they would try again Monday.

Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s negotiator and President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, confirmed the daily talks, the BBC reports.

In a video posted on social media, Podolyak said Russia was beginning to engage constructively.

“Russia now much more adequately perceives the world around it,” Podolyak said. “It is much more sensitive to the position of Ukraine, which has been proven in battlefields, and in Ukraine’s actions in terms of protecting its interests.”

Biden talks to Macron about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

President Joe Biden spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday about efforts to reach a ceasefire and ongoing negotiations with Russia.

In Biden’s call Macron, the two talked about “reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine,” according to a White House readout of the call, CNN reports.

In a separate call, Macron also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a French source familiar with the chat said Macron “reviewed the situation with him. He expressed his full support and detailed the additional aid that the European Union decided to provide at the Versailles Summit. They exchanged views on the continuation of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” CNN also reported.

The two leaders are expected to talk again later this week.

The talks after he and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin urging an immediate ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine.

‘Russian TV channels’ will begin broadcasting soon, says new mayor of Russian-occupied Ukrainian city

The newly installed mayor in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city Melitopol said “Russian TV channels” would be broadcasting in the region soon.

Galina Danilchenko said in a televised video Sunday claimed there was “a great deficit of trustworthy information being circulated,” as the decision for the broadcasting, according to CNN.

Her televised address was later posted on social media by pro-Russian Telegram channels and by the Ukrainian-controlled Zaporozhye regional administration.

Danilchenko was installed as mayor after elected mayor Ivan Fedorov was detained by armed men on Friday. The prosecutor’s office for the Russian-backed separatist region of Luhansk later accused Fedorov of terrorism offenses.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Federov’s immediate release, saying his “abduction” was a “crime against democracy.”

US officials say Russia asked China for aid, US and China set to meet Monday

Russia asked China for economic and military aid for the war in Ukraine after President Putin began his invasion last month, U.S. officials told The New York Times and the Washington Post.

China has called for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, but has rejected sanctions against Russia. The relationship between the two countries has grown over the past few decades, and both have opposed a further expansion of NATO.

The developments comes as Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is scheduled to meet on Monday with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi in Rome.

“We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,” Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.

“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world,” he added.

US journalist killed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers

American photojournalist Brent Renaud was killed Sunday in Ukraine when Russian soldiers opened fire on a car in Irpin, a town 30 miles outside the capital of Kyiv.

A second American journalist, Juan Arredondo was rushed to a hospital with shrapnel wounds, police said.

Arredondo, 46, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in an interview from a hospital that the two men were filming refugees fleeing the area when their car rolled up to a checkpoint and the Russians began shooting. He said Renaud was shot in the neck.

Renaud, 50, and his brother Craig frequently collaborated on film and television projects. They covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, extremism in Africa, cartel violence in Mexico, and the youth refugee crisis in Central America, according to their website.

Renaud was working on a project in Ukraine focused on the global refugee crisis for TIME Studios, the company said in a statement Sunday afternoon.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that the U.S. government would consult with Ukraine to determine what happened and would then “execute appropriate consequences.”

Airstrike near Polish border kills at least 35

A Russian airstrike on a military training base in western Ukraine killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, a local official said. The assault brought the war to within 25 miles of the border with Poland after a senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow considered foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine “legitimate targets.”

The United States and NATO have regularly sent instructors to the range, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, to train Ukrainian military personnel. The facility has also hosted international NATO drills. Just weeks before the war began, Florida National Guard members trained there.

The base has become a crucial logistics hub and training center since Russia’s invasion began, The New York Times reported. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told ABC News that U.S. military personnel had left the training facility weeks ago and were not present during the airstrike. It was not immediately revealed whether any foreign fighters were at the center.

The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Russian forces fired more than 30 cruise missiles at the Yavoriv military range, located about 20 miles northwest of the city of Lviv.

Pope rails against ‘barbarism’ of Russian siege

Pope Francis urged Russia to stop the massacre in Ukraine by allowing safe passage out of cities under siege and making a serious effort to bring peace at the negotiating table. Mariupol in particular is being “martyred by the ruinous war” raged by Russia against Ukraine, he said. He implored leaders to “listen to the cry of those who suffer” and end the bombings.

“Faced with the barbarism of the killing of children, and of innocent and defenseless citizens, there are no strategic reasons that hold up,” Francis said. “The only thing to be done is to cease the unacceptable armed aggression before the city is reduced to a cemetery.”

Russia could be preparing to use chemical weapons

Russia could be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, an act that would draw a “severe price,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday.

Sullivan told CBS News that Russian rhetoric is increasingly claiming the Ukrainians and Americans will potentially use chemical or biological weapons “and that’s an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it, and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.”

Asked what consequences would result, he said he would not go beyond what President Joe Biden indicated on Friday: “They will pay a severe price.”

“We have communicated that directly to the Russians,” he said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Russian yachts being seized across Europe

Russian yacht owners are encountering rough seas around the world as nations sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight press sanctions that include impounding assets of Russia’s wealthy class. World leaders hope harsh economic sanctions that target Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs could apply pressure on the Russian president to end his brutal military assault on Ukraine. Italy announced Saturday that it had seized a $580 million superyacht linked to Russian energy and fertilizer magnate Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. Several other yachts have been seized in recent weeks in Italy, Germany and Fance.

Sullivan: US nuclear posture hasn’t changed

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday the U.S. has seen no reason to change its nuclear posture in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine or threats involving nuclear weapons. In the opening days of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin indicated that if the U.S. and other NATO allies continued to impose heavy sanction against the Russian economy, or if they attempt to aid Ukrainian forces, the Kremlin would be ready to respond with nuclear weaponry.

“We are watching this extremely closely. And obviously the escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict and other conflicts the American people have seen over the years,” Sullivan said. He noted that “as things stand today” the U.S. isn’t making an adjustment to its nuclear posture, “but it is something that we monitor day by day, hour by hour.”

USA TODAY/Suffolk polls: Russian Americans, Ukrainian Americans oppose war

U.S. residents who identify with Russian or Ukrainian heritage express strikingly similar views about the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, a pair of exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls finds. The two groups are united in their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war being fiercely fought on his orders.

The invasion is opposed by nearly everyone in both groups: 87% of Russian-Americans and 94% of Ukrainian-Americans. Those of Russian descent have a more positive view of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (72%) than they do of Putin (6%). By nine-to-one, they say Putin should be removed from office.

“Somebody just needs to extract him,” said Dina Sarkisova, 44, who owns a spa in San Diego and participated in the survey. Half-Russian and half-Azeri, she came to the United States as a refugee in 1990, fleeing conflict in Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. “There’s no reasoning with him.”

Death toll in battered Mariupol surpasses 1,500, mayor says

In Mariupol, which has endured some of the worst punishment since Russia invaded, efforts to bring food, water and medicine into the port city of 430,000 and to evacuate civilians, were prevented by unceasing attacks. More than 1,500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according to the mayor’s office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves. Russian forces shelled a mosque sheltering over 80 children and adults in Mariupol, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.

“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach Mariupol and blocked another, Ukrainian officials say. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces captured Mariupol’s eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine government: 85 children killed by Russian attacks

Since Russian attacks on Ukraine began, 85 children have died, the Ukrainian government said Sunday morning. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova gave the casualty number in a tweet, adding the toll the war has taken on schools.

“Deliberate and brutal shelling of civilians continues. 369 educational institutions were damaged, 57 of which were completely destroyed,” she said.

Bus with refugees overturns in Italy, 1 dead

Italian state radio says a bus carrying about 50 refugees from Ukraine has overturned on a major highway in northern Italy, killing a passenger and injuring several others, none of them seriously. RAI radio said one woman died and the rest of those aboard the bus were safely evacuated after the accident early Sunday near the town of Forli’. It wasn’t immediately clear where the bus was headed.

About 35,000 Ukrainians refugees who fled the war have entered Italy, most of them through its northeastern border with Slovenia. Forli’ is in the region of Emilia-Romagna, which borders the Adriatic Sea and which so far has taken in about 7,000 refugees.

The accident is under investigation.

A third Russian general has died in fighting, Ukraine officials say

A Russian general was killed in fighting at Ukraine’s southern city Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said.

Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general to die since the invasion of Ukraine began, making an unusual loss of such a high-ranking military official during fighting. Kolesnikov was the commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District, according to Ukraine’s military.

Russia did not confirm Kolesnikov’s death, and has not shared many details about its military losses during the invasion of Ukraine. Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, who had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya, had previously been reported killed.

Ukraine: 7 dead, including one child, in attack on humanitarian corridor

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said Saturday that seven people, including one child, were killed Friday by Russian soldiers while traveling along a humanitarian corridor, calling the act a “military crime.”

The ministry claimed Russian soldiers shot at a group of civilians, consisting primarily of women and children, behind “the agreed ‘green’ corridor.” The attack allegedly occurred during an evacuation attempt in the village of Peremoga, which is in the Baryshevskyi district of the Kyiv region. The number of non-fatal injuries from the shooting is unknown, the agency said.

The defense ministry additionally claimed that after the shooting, Russian soldiers would not allow other individuals to escape.

“At present, it is practically impossible to contact them, as well as to provide humanitarian and medical care,” the agency said.

– Ella Lee

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

The News Times

How to read Vladimir Putin

By Carlos Lozada – March 11, 2022

The moment is etched in the lore of Vladimir Putin: The Berlin Wall had just succumbed to hammers, chisels and history, and a KGB officer still shy of 40 and stationed in Dresden, East Germany, was in a panic, burning documents and requesting military support as a crowd approached. “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow,” Putin was told on the phone. “And Moscow is silent.” In an interview appearing in his 2000 book, “First Person,” Putin recalls that dreadful silence. “I got the feeling then that the country no longer existed,” he said. “That it had disappeared.” Two years after the wall went down, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did, too. A decade after, Putin would ascend to power in Russia, talking about a revival.

The death of the Soviet Union, and Putin’s autopsy of the corpse, helps explain why he has risked a European conflict – and a confrontation with Washington – by launching a brutal assault on Ukraine. The U.S.S.R., he continued in that interview more than two decades ago, collapsed because it was suffering “a paralysis of power.” If the phrase sounds familiar, that’s because Putin repeated it in a defiant speech justifying his new war. The demise of the U.S.S.R., Putin stated on Feb. 24, “has shown us that the paralysis of power … is the first step toward complete degradation and oblivion.” The end of the Cold War, in his view, was not a matter of ideology or economics but of attitude and will. The Soviets blinked, and the Americans seized the opportunity. “We lost confidence for only one moment, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the world,” Putin declared. So much of what has followed – the unipolar era of U.S. supremacy that Putin reviles, the expansion of NATO he decries, the diminishment of Russia he rejects and the restoration he now seeks – only affirms his fixation on that moment.

“What Putin Really Wants” is a perennial topic for cable news debates and big-think magazine covers; the new invasion of Ukraine has prompted questions about the Russian leader’s mental health and pandemic-era isolation. But his motives can also be gleaned in part from his book and his frequent essays and major speeches, all seething with resentment, propaganda and selfjustification. In light of these writings, Russia’s attack on Ukraine seems less about reuniting two countries that Putin considers “a single whole,” as he put it in a lengthy essay last year, than about challenging the United States and its NATO minions, those cocky, illegitimate winners of the Cold War. “Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from?” Putin demanded during his declaration of war. A world with one dominant superpower is “unacceptable,” he has stated, and he constantly warns that this imbalance – exemplified in NATO’s expansion – threatens Russia’s existence. “For our country, it is a matter of life and death,” he contends.

In “First Person,” a collection of interviews with Putin and various relatives and associates, he brags that he received top grades in high school, except for one subject. “I had gotten a B in composition,” he admits. If so, the teacher got it about right.

Associated Press

AP PHOTOS: Day 18: Images capture widespread destruction

The Associated Press – March 13, 2022

As Russian shells hit Irpin, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, two Ukrainian soldiers took cover against a wall Sunday, heads down on the bare ground. Another soldier dug a foxhole.

In an Irpin park, a woman’s body lay amid downed trees and debris. Underground, many people sheltered in basements without electricity.

Irpin is also where Russian troops on Sunday opened fire on the car of U.S. video journalist Brent Renaud, killing him and wounding a colleague.

AP photographers captured scenes of devastation in Irpin and around Ukraine on Sunday, the 18th day of the war. The shells of bombed-out buildings and a damaged kindergarten classroom in Kharkiv. Rubble in besieged Mariupol. Firefighters trying to douse flames in a ruined food storage facility in the capital, Kyiv.

Since their invasion, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, and have besieged several cities, pummeling them with strikes and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

In a hospital in Brovary, the photos show doctors and nurses working on people who were injured and lost limbs.

Other images showed life for refugees in shelters in western Ukraine and in neighboring countries. A boy worked on a puzzle; a family huddled behind a pile of suitcases; a mother read to her young child in a room crowded with beds.

Daily Beast

Here’s What Putin Doesn’t Want You to Know About What’s Happening Inside Russia Right Now

From Russia With Love:

President Putin has effectively banned foreign correspondents reporting on Russia during his war in Ukraine. This is what he doesn’t want you to know.

 Craig Copetas – March 12, 2022 

Listen to article15 minutes

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done more than leave the ruble without a cause. “I don’t have enough to take a shit,” gripes Vadim fumbling for the 60 rubles, about 44 cents, needed to unlock the pay toilet at the Khoroshevo railway station.

Three weeks into the war, Russia’s financial constipation is unmistakable. The West first sanctioned the country’s banking sector. The global financial system then took command and gridlocked practically every money thoroughfare between Russia and the rest of the world. Visa and Mastercard evaporated. Google and Apple shut off their digital payment systems. Insurance policies vanished. The Big Mac is no more.

And now, in St. Petersburg, Sveta—whose name has been changed for her safety like everyone in this story—is seeking blossoms imported from the Netherlands.

“No Dutch flowers?” the 30-year-old woman asks Olga, the florist in the lobby of the Gostinyi Dvor Metro station, site of many of the anti-war demonstrations and where at least 1,000 protesters so far have been arrested. “How are you going to stay open without Dutch flowers?”

“Fuck them,” replies the seventy-something flower-seller. “I’ll head back to my village and grow the fucking flowers in the garden.”

Sveta, a lawyer who owns a business consultancy, laments that Putin’s ham-fisted control of Russian media has twisted a majority of the country’s 145 million people into generations of Olgas. “The number of young people who support Putin’s madness is terrifying,” she explains. “We’re all upset about the related bans, like Netflix and Spotify, which only reinforce the suppression of freedom of speech. With no information, Putin’s zombification of Russia will accelerate.”

Yet tapping into Russia’s fondness for dark humor, Sveta adds, “we cannot force McDonald’s to stay, and we may even emerge healthier for it.”

Nearby, outside the Cherneshevskaya Metro Station, a Molotov cocktail’s throw from Putin’s childhood neighborhood, two middle-aged women are having a conversation.

“If Putin didn’t go to the Ukraine they would be on our doorstep this year,” says the first woman. “America were going to send thousands of Nazis into Russia.”

“True,” her friend agrees. “Someone from the Ukraine was writing to me, terrorizing me on my phone. I erased all the messages. That’s how the Ukrainian secret police tracks us.”

“What’s the difference for us,” says the first. “We had kasha, potatoes and herring, and we will still have kasha, potatoes and herring. I don’t need parmesan cheese.”

“We live fine,” is the second woman’s verdict. “Let everyone in Russia live like us.”

Back in Moscow, there’s an argument going on between two old friends in an apartment. They’re reading an article on Russian military actions in Ukraine as described in the popular ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra, which is owned by the 84-year-old novelist and Putin pal Alexander Prokhanov.

The headline blares: Going Forward, the Town of Izyum is Liberated. Nazis are Killing the Un-Loyal. We Liquidate Military Criminals.

“Putin’s propaganda has turned us into bastards, monsters,” says Boris, a 65-year-old translator.

“The President is protecting us from a Nazi invasion,” fires back his life-long friend Nikolai, a doctor and frequent visitor to Miami. “Why do you not support him? On every particular point, Putin’s position is concrete.”

Boris scoffs: “There’s no way to measure that under a totalitarian regime where all the polls are rigged.”

Across Moscow, at the hipster Dada Cafe, Volodya slides the right side of his palm across his throat, an old Russian sekir baska or “axe-head” gesture that signals: “I’m fed up with this” to his companion. Volodya lowers his voice to barely a whisper. “This scum, Putin, should be crushed,” he adds. Volodya then raises his voice for others in the café to hear. “I officially support the operation conducted by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.”

A woman at the adjoining table stiffly nods her head. “NATO is making dirty bombs in the Ukraine,” she says. “They’re all Nazis.”

“What’s most horrifying,” Boris wrote in his last message from Moscow, “is the efficiency of Putin’s propaganda. We are caught in a shitload of fish.”

Russian culture is rich in off-color expressions and double entendres, this one makes it plain that the average Russian has been ensnared in Putin’s shit and there’s nothing anyone can do to escape.

Many of the expressions favored in these parts reflect the great gulf between dreams of what might be and the reality of what is.

Perhaps the illustration that best describes what Putin has created is a line taken from the film version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, the story of a professor who transplants the testicles of a freshly dead, drunken apparatchik into a spotted puppy named Sharik.

The result is Sharikov, an uncontrollable fascist whose lying and thievery makes everyday life in Russia unbearable. “What have I done?” the professor moans. “I’ve turned a perfectly nice little dog into a son of a bitch.”

The professor ultimately manages to neuter Sharikov, much in the same manner the West is using sanctions to spay Putin’s totalitarian regime. For the moment, however, the economic surgery is in large part limited to removing imported Italian cheese from the pasta and Starbucks beans from the iced lattes. That will change soon enough.